SOURCE: David R. Fideler, in an introduction to The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, edited and translated by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, Phanes Press, 1987, pp. 19-54.

In the following excerpt, Fideler discusses the significant elements of Pythagoras's thought and assesses the influence of these ideas in the present era.

It has been suggested, by Alfred North Whitehead, that "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." If such be the case, what might then be said of Pythagoras, to whose philosophy Plato was so greatly indebted? While no definitive answer will be attempted here, it might do well to note that not only did Pythagoras first employ the term philosophy, and define the discipline thereof in the classic sense, but that he bequeathed to his followers, and to the whole of Western civilization, many important studies and sciences...